When candidate Donald Trump campaigned on calling China to account for its trade piracy, observers thought he was either crazy or dangerous.
Conventional Washington wisdom had assumed that an ascendant Beijing was almost preordained to world hegemony. Trump’s tariffs and polarization of China were considered about the worst thing an American president could do.
The accepted bipartisan strategy was to accommodate, not oppose, China’s growing power. The hope was that its newfound wealth and global influence would liberalize the ruling communist government.
Four years later, only a naif believes that. Instead, there is an emerging consensus that China’s cutthroat violations of international norms were long ago overdue for an accounting.
China’s re-education camps, its Orwellian internal surveillance, its crackdown on Hong Kong democracy activists and its secrecy about the deadly coronavirus outbreak have all convinced the world that China has now become a dangerous international outlier.
Trump courted moderate Arab nations in forming an anti-Iranian coalition opposed to Iran’s terrorist and nuclear agendas. His policies utterly reversed the Obama administration’s estrangement from Israel and outreach to Tehran.
Last week, Trump nonchalantly offered the Palestinians a take-it-or-leave-it independent state on the West Bank, but without believing that a West Bank settlement was the key to peace in the entire Middle East.
Trump’s cancellation of the Iran deal, in particular, was met with international outrage. More global anger followed after the targeted killing of Iranian terrorist leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
In short, Trump’s Middle East recalibrations won few supporters among the bipartisan establishment.
But recently, Europeans have privately started to agree that more sanctions are needed on Iran, that the world is better off with Soleimani gone, and that the West Bank is not central to regional peace.
China‘s Communist Party has infiltrated various levels of America’s infrastructure and is working to destroy the values of the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a speech Saturday, while also warning state governors to be wary of China’s infiltration.
“We can’t ignore China’s actions and strategic intentions,” he said while addressing the National Governors Association winter meeting. “The Chinese government has been methodical in the way it’s analyzed our system… it’s assessed our vulnerabilities and it’s decided to exploit our freedoms, to gain an advantage over us at the federal level, the state level and the local level.”
“Competition with China is happening. It’s happening in your state,” Pompeo added. “In fact, I’d be surprised if most of you in the audience had not been lobbied by the Chinese Communist Party directly.”
He said groups loyal to communist China are operating out in the open in Virginia, Minnesota, Florida and dozens of other states all around the country. Other Chinese groups, however, practice their nefarious actions in the shadows in an attempt to exercise influence over U.S. citizens and lawmakers.
Where are the liberal groups of women around the world who are marching for women’s equal rights? All you hear is “crickets”. If they truly cared, they would be protesting the way Islam treats their women. Nancy
Aceh’s all-female Sharia flogging squad is the perfect metaphor for Western feminists’ refusal to denounce Sharia oppression of women. When the time comes, maybe the Women’s March or Code Pink could select female floggers for Sharia police in the U.S.
“Indonesia’s Sharia police tout historic female flogging squad: ‘Her technique was nice,’” by Douglas Ernst, Washington Times, January 28, 2020:
Indonesia’s Sharia police have a unique take on diversity that might seem odd to Western ears: its historic all-female flogging squad.
Banda Aceh Sharia police chief investigator Zakwan, who uses one name, told Agence France-Presse this week that he was thrilled with a new recruit’s lashing performance.
“I think she did a good job. Her technique was nice,” he said for an interview published Tuesday.
The piece by Haeril Halim detailed justice being meted out against an unmarried woman who was found in a hotel room with a man.
“The masked woman nervously approaches her target, shuffles into position and then unleashes a flurry of lashes — proving herself as the newest member of the first female flogging squad in Indonesia’s Aceh province,” the piece reads. “But despite her reticence, she persevered and delivered her first flogging.”
AFP noted that the city of roughly 220,000 has three shifts of Sharia police patrolling throughout the day.
Other crimes that may result in beatings with a a rattan cane include the following: adultery, drinking alcohol, having gay sex, and gambling.
“We train them to make sure they’re physically fit and teach them how to do a proper whipping,” Zakwan told AFP. “It’s kind of an indoctrination that we give to them so they have a better understanding of their role — have no mercy for those who violate God’s law.”…
Though the comments in the video linked below are directed to Asian-Americans, most also apply to any ethnic group in America which has been stuck with Democrats to their own detriment; i.e., blacks, Jews, Latinos, etc. The Democrat Party is heavily invested in maintaining the victim status of these groups, so it cannot afford to promote policies that actually lead to their success. Prosperity for ALL is what will kill the Democrat Party
Most people don’t realize that the percentage of Asian-Americans in the USA is approximately half of the Af-Am population, and that percentage is growing while the percentage of blacks is shrinking. Asian-Americans are, by far, the most financially successful ethnic group in this nation – extinguishing the “white privilege ” myth for all but the most racist leftists in the nation.
I first became aware of Donald Trump in the late seventies. I was not impressed. In fact, I didn’t like him. I thought he was a braggart and a man who went out of his way to disrespect women. I wouldn’t have said so at the time, but he was clearly a narcissist.
Growing up in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx, I have been around men like him all my life. They’re going to do this; they’re going to do that. They have this; they have that. I took him to be a person so full of himself that his company would be unbearable.
I didn’t give him much hope of winning the presidency, either, but as election day neared, friends would ask what I thought a Trump presidency would look like. Forced at that point to think about it, I would say that as a businessman, at least he would make quality appointments to the power positions in his administration – you can’t run a successful business without being able to delegate authority to a strong team of employees.
As far as Trump’s narcissism, I’m not sure that hurts him as a president. Sure, he could show better discretion with what he says – he does seem to have an almostPlaxico Burress-type dedication to shooting himself in the foot (see L’Affaire Comey). Yet I think you need to have a certain amount of narcissism to be a successful president, although it doesn’t guarantee success.
Just look at our second-most recent president, a solipsist so narcissistic he actually thought his mere presence would slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. Barry took narcissism to a new level, seemingly believing himself some kind of god, a belief fed by the nearly total hagiographic coverage he received from the Fourth Estate, our once nationally treasured free press, reduced to sycophantic (more like “sycofanatic”) exaltation of the “light bearer,” the man with the “crease.”
The difference between Barry’s narcissism and Trump’s is this: Trump is the guy who looks at the most beautiful girl at the party and says, “I can get her number.” Barry would look at the same girl and say, “She wants me.” Trump would then pursue the girl, and Barry would walk away, because obviously, she is not good enough for him, and besides, someone told him there’s a mirror in the next room.
Those attempting to argue that other countries will follow California’s lead in emissions reduction are completely out of touch with reality with what the world’s largest and fastest growing emissions countries are now doing regarding the increased use of coal fuel on a global basis.
China is now generating electricity using coal fuel atrecord high levelsand in addition is engaging in efforts with other countries such as Pakistan to build large numbers of coal plants in that country.
China also has an on-going global strategy based onbuilding coal powerand was involved in 240 coal power projects in 65 countries between 2001 and 2016.
Anew paperconcludes that India will rely upon use of coal fuel as its energy mainstay for the next 30 years.
Additionallyboth China and Indiaincreasingly dominate ownership of coal reserves with 117 companies identified producing 3 billion tons of coal a year with 150 billion tons of coal in reserves.
California Governor Brown’s SB 32 law requiring the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels 40% below levels measured in 1990 is necessitating the development of massive numbers of new regulations and policy that will allow the state government to control and dictate virtually every aspect of Californian’s lives including:
where and how they can live,
what kind of jobs and businesses they can work in,
A recent mishap with the USS Carl Vinson is a case study for rebuilding the fleet to about 350 ships.
The USS Bataan fires a missile during exercises in the Atlantic Ocean, Jan. 11.PHOTO:AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
By
John Lehman
April 27, 2017
Mr. Lehman, secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, is the author of the forthcoming “Oceans Ventured, Oceans Gained” (W.W. Norton).
EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE: The next step is to reform the overgrown defense bureaucracy and overhaul the Pentagon’s dysfunctional procurement process. According to the Government Accountability Office, cost overruns have ballooned to more than $450 billion over the past two decades. The Navy needs to take authority back from the bureaucracy, end the culture of constant design changes and gold-plating, and bring back fixed-price competition.
Recall the development of the Polaris nuclear-missile system in the late 1950s. The whole package—a nuclear submarine, a solid-fuel missile, an underwater launch system, a nuclear warhead and a guidance system—went from the drawing board to deployment in four years (and using slide rules). Today, according to the Defense Business Board, the average development timeline for much less complex weapons is 22.5 years.
A case in point is the Ford-class aircraft carrier. The program is two years delayed and $2.4 billion over budget. The ship was designed to include 12 new technologies, such as electric instead of steam catapults that had not yet been developed. Many of these systems don’t work after 10 years of trying, and the ship will be delivered to the Navy without fully functional radar and unable to launch or recover aircraft. Yet the defense firms involved still profit under cost-plus contracts.
If you’re going to engage in a foreign policy capitulation, might as well do it when everyone is getting tanked and otherwise occupied. Say, around New Year’s Eve.
Here’s the story. In October, Iran test-fires a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in brazen violation of a Security Council resolution explicitly prohibiting such launches. President Obama does nothing. One month later, Iran does it again. The administration makes a few gestures at the U.N. Then nothing. Then finally, on Dec. 30, the White House announces a few sanctions.
They are weak, aimed mostly at individuals and designed essentially for show. Amazingly, even that proves too much. By 10 p.m. that night, the administration caves. The White House sends out an email saying that sanctions are off — and the Iranian president orders the military to expedite the missile program.
Is there any red line left? First, the Syrian chemical weapons. Then the administration insistence that there would be no nuclear deal unless Iran accounted for its past nuclear activities. (It didn’t.) And unless Iran permitted inspection of its Parchin nuclear testing facility. (It was allowed self-inspection and declared itself clean.) And now, illegal ballistic missiles.
The premise of the nuclear deal was that it would constrain Iranian actions. It’s had precisely the opposite effect. It has deterred us from offering even the mildest pushback to any Iranian violations lest Iran walk away and leave Obama legacy-less.
